E3 2017: How to Spot Bullshit in Video-Game Marketing

A gentle reminder: You won't know if a game is good until someone plays it.

All week long, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, has been underway. It's sort of like the Super Bowl of video games; it's what happens when you put an Apple press conference, Comic-Con, and a metric ton of trailer footage in a blender and dump it all over the area surrounding the L.A. Convention Center in early June.

If that sounds overwhelming, it's because it is—E3 is an annual hype reel for things games that may or may not eventually come, orchestrated to get you off your ass and into the store or website of your choice in order to buy a shiny new game console. If you have a nostalgic fave, a wishlist for games that you would love to see made, or even a cursory interest in video games, there is likely something at E3 that will dazzle you, because that's the point: to dazzle. Not necessarily to deliver.

E3 is why, every summer, there is a sudden deluge of trailers for games you'll likely see shared on social media, some of which look really damn good, even if you are utterly jaded. Like this God of War trailer, a reboot of sorts for a series I haven't been interested in for a decade, one that looks patently ridiculous if you think about it for more than a minute:

Quick recap for anyone who isn't in the know: The God of War games is most widely known as a trilogy of action games where you play an angry demigod out for revenge who brutally kills just about everyone he meets. In 2005, the game that kicked the series off was a compelling revenge fantasy that was metal as hell, but after the second, equally rad game, the series delivered diminishing returns and all the angry murder didn't seem to have a point anymore. God of War is a relic, but looking at this trailer, it's hard to care.

Hype works. And you should be aware of it, because there's a lot of bullshit in video-game marketing. Here's an example of some poor sap who seems very excited about a video game that was announced at E3. Let's make an example out of him, shall we?

Here's the trailer for the game that was announced—quite possibly the biggest show-stopper at E3 this year, Beyond Good and Evil 2.

Context will explain why this game is a big deal: Beyond Good and Evil was a 2003 sci-fi action-adventure in which you played Jade, a reporter who stumbled upon a massive alien conspiracy. People loved it for its vibrant setting, its music and characters, and its protagonist—a fully realized woman in a landscape scant with them. And the game gave equal credence to her job as a journalist (taking photos was a big part of the game) as it did her ability to kick ass. It was a sales failure, but gained a cult following over the years. A 2008 teaser trailer at that year's E3 stoked the fires of the Beyond Good and Evil fandom promising a sequel in the works, and then... nothing. For almost ten years.

And now this new trailer drops during E3, a complete surprise. What's more, isn't the trailer cool as hell? A cockney thief-monkey! Who talks! And says "fuck" a lot! In a crazy-ass world that looks like it was made by the world's biggest The Fifth Element fan! It's wonderful.

It's also not a game.

Just like you can't know if a car's for you until you drive it, you can't really judge a video game until actual, real people play it in an uncontrolled environment.

Everyone knows that movie trailers misrepresent movies all the time—I don't like Man of Steel, but the third trailer for it is probably one of my top five superhero films. Games are even more susceptible to misrepresentation, because a lot of times, games trailers—like the ones for Beyond Good and Evil 2, both the past iteration and the current one—aren't cuts from people playing a game. They're short films meant to sell an idea. A vibe. A feeling. You can't play those things, and you should be suspicious of them.

In fact, the interactive nature of video games means you should be suspicious of everything, even videos of what we call "gameplay"—just like you can't know if a car's for you until you drive it, you can't really judge a video game until actual, real people play it in an uncontrolled environment. Video-game marketing is a highly controlled and well-orchestrated machine that often obscures as much as it illuminates. Bad games can look good; good-looking games can turn out to be bad in the daylight of their full release; promised games can fail to come to fruition entirely. In 2009, Sony announced Agent, a game from the creators of Grand Theft Auto, to be made exclusively for Playstation 3. It would've been a huge coup, if it ever happened. No one's said a thing about Agent since.

Of course, none of this is meant to drag any of the games mentioned here, especially Beyond Good and Evil 2—odds are that, given its history, everyone involved on this game knows the dangers of hyping a game and it not delivering. No one wants to make a bad game, and we sure as hell don't want to play them. But I also don't know what Beyond Good and Evil 2 will look like, and I won't know for some time. And the developers making Beyond Good and Evil 2 have every reason to take their time—in video games, marketing bullet points are taken with the sincerity of politician's campaign promises, and, as No Man's Sky has shown, the backlash for not being up to snuff can be intense. But it's often best to keep your head clear in all of this, and remember the golden rule: Nothing matters until actual real people play the actual finished game.

Now excuse me, I'm going to watch this dope-ass Spider-Man trailer.

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